


What Goes There?

by Brigantine



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Deputy Derek Hale, Dogs, Fluff and Humor, Future Fic, Getting Together, Happy Ending, M/M, Mutual Pining, POV Derek Hale, POV Sheriff Stilinski, POV Stiles, Post-Season/Series 04
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-10
Updated: 2018-04-10
Packaged: 2019-04-20 23:46:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14272179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brigantine/pseuds/Brigantine
Summary: It's the summer after sophomore year of college. Life after high school goes on. Lydia and Erica express their frustration at watching Stiles and Derek continue to pine over each other, while Sheriff Stilinski finds himself with a fluffy new partner and tries to figure out exactly what may have escaped from a truck that rolled over on the highway during a rainstorm.





	What Goes There?

**Author's Note:**

> **Important Notes:** First, aside from the Season 6 trailer that was all over the internet I have exactly zero notions of anything that happened to anybody after Season 4. Season 4 is as far as I got. 
> 
> Note #2: Allison lives! Background Scott/Allison/Isaac, with a little Chris Argent at the end, and references to Kira and Malia, but I didn't put them in the tags, because they're not the main focus.
> 
> Note #3: Alan Deaton kinda gets dragged. I had not intended that when I started, but while re-watching some of the episodes I had a lot of "But Why???" moments, and then the questions got hashed out by the characters, as we all know often happens. Apologies if that's a problem.
> 
> Note #4: I was in a mood for dogs, so there's a lotta dogs in here.

Tuesday morning, three weeks into July Lydia and Stiles were driving home from Fort Bragg. The big, yellow summer moon that had lit their way home was dipping down west of US highway 101. They'd been the only vehicle on the road for the last thirty miles. On either side the tall shadows of redwoods crowded the highway, narrowing their world to the road and the ragged denim blue sky across it. It had been a long drive, but they'd passed through McKinleyville and Trinidad, and Beacon Hills wasn't far. Stiles was driving without headlights. Not long after the nogitsune tore itself loose of him in a losing bid for freedom Stiles had discovered that when the moon was up he could see in the dark nearly as well as Scott and Derek could. He never had been much afraid of the dark anyway, even when he should have been. 

Leaving the Sumner pack in the middle of the night to head home had not, perhaps, been one of their smarter ideas, but Lydia was blaming the full moon and a tumbling sky over Fort Bragg. Alpha Joanna Sumner's family had run all night, so Lydia and Stiles had been well awake anyway. The rags of the storm had tracked them home, shifting between clear black skies full of needle-bright stars followed by the sudden gathering of storm clouds and bursts of torrential rain. As they got closer to Beacon Hills, the skies had mostly cleared, revealing pale daylight just beginning to edge up into the east.

Jackson was a year behind Danny at the University of Hawaii. It had taken him a while to decide what he wanted, and where, or more to the point who, he might call home. This summer, as they had the summer before, Jackson and Danny had gone to stay with Danny's uncles and his grandfather. Most of their days were spent on one of the family fishing boats. Grandpa Mahealani didn't hold much with gas-powered winches, and Jackson's extra strength came in especially handy when pulling in the nets. The nets were small, as fishing nets went, and thrown out and hauled in again by hand. Jackson had become good at disentangling incidental sea creatures with as little trauma as possible. He was quick, accurate, praised by Grandpa for a skill that was important. 

The summer fishing wasn't Grandpa Mahealani's only source of income, nor for Danny's uncles, either, so some days they didn't throw out the nets at all. Some days, they just sailed.

Lydia smiled down at the picture displayed on her phone; Jackson and Danny squinting against the sun, with one of Danny's uncles smiling at them in the background, and the ocean, blue and gleaming behind them. This was the feeling, these summers, Jackson had told her recently, that he had been searching for so desperately all that time on the lacrosse team. 

"Derek," Lydia said, as she put her phone to sleep, "still suffers from the conviction that everything he touches will turn to ash. I can't help but wonder whether you're still afraid the nogitsune is in there somewhere, and all these people you keep dating are merely placeholders until disaster ultimately strikes."

"Hey, I almost brought Ashley home for Christmas."

"You did bring Nick home for spring break," Lydia reminded Stiles, "yet he's summering with his family in Georgia, sans Stiles."

"We sort of broke up," Stiles admitted.

Lydia snorted. "Good. He would not have withstood the realities of Beacon Hills. Erica did not care for him, which is never a good start. Nick was the fifth person in two years."

"Look," Stiles said, "Derek deserves nice things. I am not a nice thing. He's earned a house with a yard, no holes in the walls or old bloodstains on the floor. A pet cat, maybe a wife, some adorable little Hale babies. I mean, Braeden was good for him, but disinclined to settling down, and me? I have no idea where my life is headed."

Lydia scolded, "You are too a nice thing!" She wrinkled her nose. "Person. Before you plot out Derek's future for him, Stiles, maybe you should ask him if that's what he wants. Also I think you're being a coward, and that's beneath you."

They passed a van parked on the opposite shoulder of the highway. In the pre-dawn light it was a mottled orange and brown hulk with a dented front fender. Stiles said, "Hey. I think that's Trent Waller."

Lydia twisted backwards in her seat. "What?"

"Or at least it's his old horror-film van," Stiles amended. "Remember that from high school?" He slowed the Jeep to get a better look. "And a small dog? Maybe?"

The van receding behind the Jeep was parked sloppily on the west shoulder of the highway, its headlights glaring off into the weed-filled ditch alongside. The left rear tire had blown flat, and that side of the rear doors hung open. A tall man in dark pants, a white t-shirt and a trucker's cap kicked at something burrowing beneath the rear bumper.

"I can't tell from this distance whether or not that's Trent," Lydia said. "Anyway, I haven't seen him since senior year."

"My dad has," Stiles said.

He drove sixty yards past the van, give or take, pulled a u-turn in the middle of the highway, eased off the gas and let the Jeep drift down the low grade toward the van. When they got to fifty feet or so from it he stopped, set the brake, and shoved open the driver's side door. After years of hard use and a half dozen unlikely reincarnations, the Jeep's door opened more quietly when Stiles didn't try to finesse it. 

Lydia reached across and pulled Stiles's baseball bat from its place on the floor alongside the driver's seat. She climbed out of the Jeep and left the door open behind her. She strode down the middle of the highway toward the tableau at the van. The heels of her shoes made small, sharp sounds against the asphalt.

Trent was preoccupied with swearing, and hauling on a dirty length of clothesline attached to whatever had hidden itself beneath the rear of his vehicle. Lydia was only about ten feet from him by the time he noticed her. He didn't hear Stiles coming from the other side.

"Heya, Trent. How ya doin'?" 

Trent turned toward Stiles, swore, and lashed out, a heavy roundhouse swing that telegraphed itself in plenty of time for Stiles to dodge and dart in close. He caught Trent three times in the face, quick and dirty. In the highway's quiet Lydia heard Trent's nose break as his head snapped back the third time, and he crumpled to the asphalt. Stiles stepped over him to hunker in the dirt of the highway's shoulder and peer into the dark space under the van.

Lydia was considering whether Trent's broken nose might have perhaps been a step beyond the necessary when she caught the sound of old metal hinges slowly grinding, of boots treading carefully on the muddy gravel of the shoulder. When the second man stepped around the corner of the van Lydia noted the chunky .38 pistol held at quivering arm's length, neatly stepped sideways, swung the baseball bat hard at his wrist, and then at his head. When he dropped to his knees she shortened her grip on the bat and bunted to put him down properly. 

"Trent Waller, and Rich Dalby. I might have known." Lydia kicked the .38 into the ditch. "They're moving up in the world. Given a certain value of up."

Stiles hadn't looked away from the shadows under the van. "Parrish teach you that thing with the bat?"

"Your father," Lydia said. "Also an exciting new way to deploy a Claymore mine, but that's another story. " She stood next to Stiles's shoulder and looked down at his right hand where it dangled between his bent knees, bruising already starting across his knuckles.

"The notion of you and my dad teaming up to fight crime both delights and terrifies me."

"It didn't seem to bother you when your father recruited Derek," Lydia teased.

"Shush, I'm concentrating here."

"Are you trying to use the Force? You know, pack dynamics being what they are, we might not be seen as heroes."

"Yeah," Stiles said. "Nevertheless."

A dainty white muzzle with a little round black nose had peeped out from beneath the van's rear bumper, followed a small, furry face with big, dark eyes.

Stiles coaxed gently, "Hey, little fuzz-face." He doubted briefly whether he should have been more diplomatic, given that this might be a dog, or it might be not exactly a dog, though it seemed rather small to not be a dog, given the usual alternative.

The probably a dog inched forward enough to bump its nose against Stiles's knuckles.

Lydia let out a tiny squeak. "Georgie? Oh, sweetie pie! Come here, baby."

Georgie the dog scrambled out from under the van and skittered frantically toward Lydia. She crouched down, balancing carefully on her heels as little Georgie threw himself into her embrace, whining pitiably and licking at Lydia's chin. "Ick," she said affectionately as she gently fended him off with ear scratches and pets. 

"That is the hairiest marshmallow I have ever seen," Stiles declared. "But more to the point, what is he doing in the dubious company of Trent and Rich?" He grimaced as he stepped up into the interior of the van. His voice came back hollowly. "Or do I not want to know? Oh, hello!"

"What do you see?"

"Stolen dairy crates," Stiles said. "Hey, neat. These make great bookshelves."

Lydia huffed impatiently. "Stiles."

"Right. Not so neatly packed with what is apparently the entire contents of someone's liquor cabinet. Fancy wine, fancy wine, fancy... Ooo. Glenfiddich. That made me throw up a lot in freshman year. You'd think I'd learn after the hell that is a J.D. hangover, wouldn't you." Stiles pawed briefly through another of the crates. "A jewelry box, with lots of expensive-looking shinies. Aaand various top of the line etceteras. A nice bit of breaking and entering, here. You get the idea."

Lydia rose and headed back toward the Jeep, Georgie trotting close at her heels. Stiles hopped down from the van to take up the rear more sedately.

"They must have collected Georgie at the same time they were stealing the etceteras," Lydia said. "He's a playmate of Prada's at doggie daycare. He belongs to the Sproxtons."

Stiles searched the Jeep's glove box for his phone and called the Sheriff's station while Lydia climbed into the passenger side and fussed over Georgie.

"Up on Snooty McSnoot hill? Heyyyy, Deputy Boyd. How's it going?" Stiles winced. "Um, Lydia and I are down here on 101, just north of Trinidad."

"McKenzie Terrace," Lydia corrected. "Georgie is his nickname, of course. The name on his registration with the American Kennel Club is a very long, terribly pretentious thing I've made a particular effort to forget."

"Because Prada isn't pretentious. Sorry, trading banter with Lydia."

"Because it's Prada," Lydia said quietly to Georgie, who licked her hand in solidarity.

"Yeah, it's Trent and Rich. They appear to have burgled a house up on McKenzie Terrace, and while they were at it decided to take along a dog that looks like a dandelion, or maybe a snowball rolled in rabbit fur."

"Don't listen," Lydia told Georgie. "He wouldn't know the difference between a Borzoi and a Bedlington."

"But I do know the difference between a hawk and a handsaw," Stiles told her. To Boyd he said, "At the moment, they're lying quietly on the asphalt, getting a head start on that time off for good behavior." He squawked into the phone, "No, they are not dead! I am shocked and - okay not so shocked that you would ask me such a thing, given our history, Beacon Hills, blah blah. They are alive. Yes. We have some rope in case they wake up previous to your arrival. Or I can just let Lydia smack them with the bat again. She's very precise."

Stiles ended his call to one of Beacon Hills's finest. "Boyd will be with us shortly. He is just pleased as punch that we've thought to include him in our pre-dawn crime-fighting adventure."

Lydia tickled Georgie under his chin. She noticed that she'd broken off a fingernail, and let out a huff of irritation.

"Look at this," she complained, waving her hand at Stiles. "These carefully managed nails survived an entire winter in New Jersey, breaking up a fight between the freshman dorm’s nice old domovoi and an invading kikimora, spring break, a sorority rush, the flight from Newark Liberty to San Francisco, and three days with the rambunctious Sumner offspring, only to succumb at the last to stupid Rich Dalby."

"Petty larceny," Stiles agreed, as he tightened a loop of clothesline around Trent's feet, "has a lot to answer for."

***********

Sheriff John Stilinski crossed his forearms over the damp wood of Wilson McGinty's picket gate and looked across the wild green grass of a long yard dotted with yellow dandelions to the old farmhouse's wide front porch. There, a smooth-coated dog the approximate size of a dump truck and the exact color of wet cement lay at its ease across the top step, regarding John steadily with pale yellow eyes. 

Luther McGinty had lost half the sight in his left eye during a successful showdown with a pack of coyotes a couple of years back. He knew John, and he wasn't easily startled, but haste with Luther was rarely worth the regret. He raised his broad head, and pricked up his short, half-folded ears. Encouraged by the lack of snarling John reached forward to fiddle with the gate's latch. "Hey, Luther. How's business? Eaten any interlopers lately?"

Luther's heavy tail slammed rapidly against the wooden boards in greeting, making a racket like a dozen home runs. As John made his way up the crooked stone path Luther lurched to his feet, stretching first his back end upward, and then his front in time to shove his square muzzle against John's hip as he topped the stairs, inviting John to give his ears a thorough scrubbing. 

From inside the house Wilson's voice rode a wave of yapping that swelled joyously from Galahad, Milo and Ruth Anne, three scruffy terrier mixes who were giving their utmost to sound like thirty. The screen door gave way with a screech of old hinges that made Luther shake his head as he and John waded through the swirl of small, noisy bodies into the house. 

"That you, John?" 

John bent over to let the crowd of little mutts sniff him jubilantly. There would be no turning them off, until they'd been satisfied with their fair share of attention.

Wilson appeared in the kitchen doorway, drying his hands on a checkered dish towel. What looked like a young, tri-color border collie trotted lightly beside him and regarded John curiously from the shelter of Wilson's knees. 

Wilson was tall, wiry and bandy-legged, with thick white hair that stood up from his scalp like thistle fluff. He snorted amiably from behind a bountiful white mustache. "You are a pushover, Sheriff." 

He motioned John through the kitchen to the rear of the house, where he closed the screen door against the terriers' inquisitive noses. He pointed at the muddy ground between the duck pen and the paddock, where two nannies and a grey pony watched warily from the open door of the small barn. A dozen rusty-colored Rhode Island hens pecked among the weeds near the house.

"I got six ducks missing," Wilson said. "All of my tiny hounds were throwin' conniptions last night, and Luther at the back door spoiling for a fight. By the time I grabbed the shotgun and turned on the porch light there was nothing left of my ducks but a broken pen and some feathers."

John crouched in the mud left from the previous night's storm to have a look at a trail of half-moon prints in the mud. "An unshod horse?" 

The little collie appeared at John's left shoulder, took a long, investigatory sniff, then began busily leaving wet nose-prints all over his jacket.

Wilson puffed agitatedly at his mustache. "It was a zebra. That there's Daisy May."

"The zebra?"

Wilson raised an eyebrow. "The dog. I don't know the zebra's name."

John stood up and stared at him for a moment. "Zebra, as in herds of, roaming the Serengeti."

The collie pressed up against his knee and looked up at him, her tan eyebrows quirked inquisitively. One ear had got itself turned inside out and stuck standing up. John gently flipped it properly back to half-mast.

"Yep," Wilson said. "As in oughta be in a zoo." His gaze narrowed. "If you ask me was I drinkin' last night, I'll tell you, God as my witness, yes, I sure as hell was, but not 'til after first I'd seen the zebra, and then I saw proof left behind of what ate my ducks."

John acknowledged a creeping sense of foreboding. Truth be told, the foreboding was coming on pretty quick. "Which was?"

Wilson snorted and led John over to the far edge of the duck pen, where the gate had been crushed to nothing but splinters and crumpled bits of wire. "Pretty sure this is what set off my dogs." Luther had followed along. His short hackles rose up as he sniffed the wet ground.

John looked down at the muddy patch where Wilson was pointing. A white feather drifted over a paw print at least an inch deep, and wide as John's open hand, thumb to little finger. He sighed. The foreboding waved at him and settled down for an extended stay. "I'm gonna assume you already called the zoo."

"Not one of theirs," Wilson said. "But they await your findings with bated breath."

"Animal Control?"

"Got a garbled apology about an ostrich, two ferrets, and a small monkey wearin' a little red vest and a Shriner's hat, and then their dispatcher wished me luck and buggered off."

"Huh." John rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "Did they see the ostrich, the ferrets and the monkey all together, or consecutively?"

"They didn't say. Is it important?"

"Nah," John said. "Just one of those questions I find myself asking these days that I didn't used to."

Wilson puffed at his mustache. "If this duck-eating beast turns out to have wings or a scorpion tail to go along with those feet I am gonna be sincerely perturbed."

"Yeah," John said. "Look, we found a truck overturned north-bound on the highway this morning. Had signs of having had animals in it pretty recently."

Deputy Parrish and John had joined Smitty's Towing in hauling out a semi-trailer from where it had overturned and slid down a steep embankment about eight miles north of town. They'd walked the area looking for casualties, maybe someone thrown from the cab, but the driver was nowhere to be seen, and no footprints had been left behind in the soft earth after the hard rains for the last couple of days. 

In the muddy shoulder along the opposite side of the highway Parrish had discovered what appeared to be the marks of a second and possibly even a third vehicle, one set of tire tracks being wide and deep, like the over-turned truck had made. After the rains, though, it was difficult to be sure how fresh they were.

Wilson plucked at his mustache. "Horse trailer attached?"

"Not by the time we got there. Hay scattered around though, and a little kibble of some kind. Pieces of chicken wire, broken lumber, that sort of thing, like it was cleared out in a hurry. Might explain the zebra. And the monkey, and the ferrets and the ostrich." He pointed at the big paw print with the toe of his right boot. "This could be a particularly healthy specimen of mountain lion who started trailing the zebra through your place and decided the ducks were an easier meal."

Wilson stared doubtfully at the giant paw print. "Maybe."

One of the hens pecked experimentally at John's shoelaces. The feline paw print, John noticed, was bigger than the hen.

"Except for, y'know, Beacon Hills," Wilson said.

"Well, yeah," John conceded. "There's that."

 

John was three miles out of McGinty's farm and halfway down Meacham Boulevard when he realized he wasn't alone in the car. He uttered an ungentlemanly oath and veered hard right, passing a hand's breadth from Mr. and Mrs. Ofaeli's mailbox, and stopped in a spray of muddy gravel on the shoulder of the road. 

Daisy May hopped up from the footwell under the glove box, and into the passenger seat. She put her dainty white forefeet up on the dash, swished her feathery tail a few times, and flashed John an expression of doggy glee and general joie de vivre.

John glared at her while his heart rate settled down. "Does Wilson know you're here?"

Daisy May pushed off of the dash, picked her way neatly past the radio and John's shotgun and pressed her nose against his arm, looking up at him beseechingly with dark amber eyes. He had to hand it to the fluffy little carny, she was game.

John pulled his phone off the dash and rang up Wilson. 

"Stilinski?" Wilson's voice was nearly overwhelmed by a chorus of exuberant yapping in the background.

"Yeah. Wilson--"

"Daisy May with you?" 

"Yes. I--"

"Congratulations to you both! Alan Deaton's got all her paperwork. She's had her shots."

"Paperwork? What? What do you mean her shots? Look, I don't need a--" 

Wilson hollered, "Milo P. McGinty, you put that slipper down, it does not belong to you!"

John cringed and held the phone away from his ear for a second, then, "Did you put her up to this?"

"Don't let her talk you into too many people treats. She's got a weakness for snickerdoodles."

"Wilson! I do not need a dog!"

"She'll get bigger," Wilson promised, then ended the call, leaving John blinking at his phone. He stared at Daisy May, who had returned to the passenger's seat and looked back at him with an expression he interpreted as eager and maybe a little smug.

The cruiser's radio crackled for John's attention. Jackie's voice came through from Dispatch sounding as though she was broadcasting from the middle of a sandstorm. John grabbed the handset.

"Stilinski. What's up?" 

The radio hissed some more, then emitted a loud screeching noise like a dead tree limb scraping against aluminum siding. 

Daisy May sneezed and shook her head smartly, her ears making soft flapping noises against her skull. She eyed the radio sourly.

"See?" John told her. "The life of a Beacon County law enforcement officer is not all exciting car chases and foiling super-villains." He squeezed the call button. "Run that past me one more time, Jackie. The radio's got poltergeists again."

*********

At 9:05 when Stiles, blearily resentful of Trent Waller, Rich Dalby and all of their relations for seven generations back, arrived for his morning shift at the Beacon Hills Public library, he carried with him a breakfast burrito stuffed with eggs, ham and potatoes, and a paper cup holding sixteen precious ounces of hot, sweet, creamy coffee, balanced precariously in a travel box in the passenger seat of the Jeep. There would be perfectly serviceable coffee available in the staff lounge of the library, but the heart wanted what the heart wanted, and as soon as possible.

He set the parking brake on the Jeep and opened the fresh text on his phone. He smiled at the series of four blurry green photos, followed by a clearer picture of Kira smiling brightly across the dining car breakfast table and holding up what looked like a scone spread generously with some sort of red jam. Malia had come home from San Francisco State, and Kira from Yale, only to leave again three days ago to cross Canada on the sleeper train from Vancouver to Toronto. They had at first hoped to meet up with Allison in Montreal, but the schedules didn't match up. Malia texted Derek and Stiles regularly with abstract photographs taken from various windows as the train journeyed through the Canadian countryside. Kira's rather more focused efforts helped Stiles to correctly interpret Malia's.

Stiles observed a small crowd milling around the library's parking lot making noises of confusion, mild alarm, and a sort of general discontent. They reminded Stiles of a small flock of confused penguins. To Stiles's left, Deputy Derek Hale arrived in his Sheriff's cruiser, because someone had called the Sheriff's Department to report an intruder in the Library.

As he hip-checked the driver's side door of the Jeep shut, Stiles wondered aloud, "What new horror awaits us within?"

"What fresh hell," Derek added, as he locked the cruiser's door and pocketed his keys. He briefly scanned the crowd, looking for likely troublemakers, aside from Stiles, then demanded flatly, "Well?"

A dozen voices bubbled up, each talking over the other to better inform Deputy Hale of the creature run amok inside the library.

"A bat?" Stiles repeated, feeling rather let down. "That's it?" He hugged his warm breakfast burrito to his chest and carefully slurped at his coffee through the little hole in the plastic travel lid. 

Derek turned to him, ordered, "Stay," then disappeared through the front doors of the library.

Stiles automatically started forward in defiance of Derek's order, then thought better of it. Being hoisted up by the back of his shirt and deposited out of doors like a naughty tabby cat was not something he wanted to experience in front of his regular library patrons and Mrs. Matsuoka, the head librarian. Just the same, he placed his coffee and his burrito onto the driver's seat of the Jeep, out of harm's way, and made his way ever so casually toward the front doors of the library in Derek's wake.

From within the crowd a man's voice declared, "It'll have rabies!"

"Just because it looks like a mouse doesn't mean it'll have rabies," a small, female voice responded staunchly. "You shouldn't assume!"

Stiles turned to find ten-year-old Olivia Huong standing with her mother a few feet to his right.

Cecil Peterson, who owned the dry cleaner's over on Holcroft Boulevard, and who was ordinarily one of Stiles's most polite patrons, insisted, "Everybody knows bats have rabies!" 

Stiles drifted nearer to Olivia and Mrs. Huong. "What does it mean when someone uses the phrase 'Everybody knows' to try to win an argument?"

Olivia bounced on her toes. "It means they haven't done their research. Also they're hoping you'll just buy whatever they're telling you and not contradict them."

Stiles beamed at her. "You have learned well, padawan."

Mrs. Huong raised an eyebrow at Stiles. "At this rate she's going to be impossible by the time she gets to college." She didn't sound particularly concerned.

Cecil countered, "Wild animals get rabies all the time. That's why we have to vaccinate our pets. Because of rabies!"

"I've been vaccinated for rabies," Olivia lied handily. "Also vampires. There's a vaccine for vampires. So I'm not worried."

Cecil blinked at her from behind his glasses. "Wait. What?"

Stiles spotted Derek plowing effortlessly back through the crowd, his expression somewhere between resigned and amused.

"Is it huge? Fangs? Dracula risen from myth and dusty tomb, come to terrify a helpless population?"

"I need the net," Derek said.

Cecil Petersen stepped into Derek's path and took a breath preparatory to a lengthy demand regarding the likelihood of a breakout of rabies or possibly vampires in Beacon Hills. Derek took him by the shoulders, picked him up like a Cabbage Patch doll, and set him to one side.

"Eep," Cecil said.

Stiles trailed happily after Derek.

"Is a net standard issue for Beacon County Sheriff's Deputies now? How big is this bat? Is it a radioactive mutant?" His expression turned wide-eyed with delight. "Is it an actual bat man?" Because around Beacon Hills you never really knew.

Derek opened the cruiser's trunk and pulled out a simple net of fine gauze sewn into the shape of a cone and strung in a circle attached to a handle. 

Stiles squeaked with glee. "You carry around a butterfly net?" He could hardly wait to tell Scott. He began patting at his shirt pocket, then his jeans, searching for his phone, which he had apparently left in the Jeep. He wondered whether Mrs. Matsuoka would let him Skype off one of the public computers.

"It may interest you to know," Derek said, "that we have a healthy population of Pipevine Swallowtails in the northeast section of the preserve."

Stiles rocked back on his heels for a second. "Is that a good thing?"

"Yes." Derek turned and waded back through the crowd. "Cora likes me to send her pictures of the local wildlife."

"Last Thursday you sent her a picture of me with my shirt-tail stuck in the driver's side door of the Jeep and coffee spilled down the front of me."

"And she appreciated that," Derek told him. He put a hand on Stiles's shoulder to nudge him forward. "Come on, Curious George. I might need someone to hold a ladder."

Twelve minutes later, with Mrs. Matsuoka, fellow library assistant Shana, and Stiles all flapping dish towels at the bat to herd it into a corner, Derek executed a swift, balletic leap from the top of the authors, fiction, letters A through C standing shelves, and the small brown bat who had caused so much fuss and consternation found itself safely bundled inside a wrapping of gauze. Derek checked it for injuries as well as he could under the circumstances, and tried to project an appearance of harmlessness. The bat glared at him narrowly.

Mrs. Matsuoka asked Stiles, "Does he often do this kind of thing?" She waved one hand ceiling-ward, making vague aerial gestures.

"I don't think gravity tracks him very well," Stiles told her. He shrugged nonchalantly, but in truth would not have missed Derek's performance for a substantial donation of tax-free dollars. 

Derek brought the bat outside and uncovered it from the net enough for Olivia to have a good look at it as it wriggled in his gentle grip and attempted to sink its sharp little teeth into his fingers.

"See," Derek explained to Olivia, "it's really very fragile, and quite frightened. We have to keep that in mind when we're trying to help a wild thing."

Behind Stiles's shoulder Cecil Peterson made a soft, curiously damp sound.

"You okay there, Mr. P?"

Cecil turned tragic eyes to him, an expression such a departure from his earlier antagonism that Stiles was inspired to ask him, "Mr. Peterson, were you by any chance traumatized as a youngster by the film 'Old Yeller'?"

"I was eight years old," Cecil sniffed. "They showed it for us one day in the school auditorium. No one warned us!"

Stiles patted him gently on the shoulder. "Come on," he said. "Let's say hello to our new friend, shall we? Let the healing begin."

Cecil hesitated, but then nodded and walked along with Stiles.

"Bats do look a lot like rodents," Derek was telling Olivia, "but they belong to a group of mammals all their own, called 'chiroptera,' which means 'hand-wing' in Latin."

Olivia looked up at Derek as though he'd just hung the moon, and possibly the stars as well. She wiggled her fingers above the bat's furry little head as though she meant to pet it, but thought better of it. "It probably thinks we want to eat it," she said. "Maybe we should turn it loose, before it has a tiny bat heart attack."

"We should," Derek agreed.

He carried the little brown bat to the edge of the library's parking lot, where he could release it near a patch of sycamores. Olivia skipped beside him to keep up with his long strides. Stiles watched the two of them together, Derek tall and broad-shouldered in his deputy's uniform, Olivia tiny and quick in sparkly red sneakers, a blue polka-dot skirt, and a bright green sweater. Derek had grown up in the middle of a large, extended family. In addition to his parents and his two sisters Derek had, once upon a time, been surrounded by grandparents, and aunties, and cousins. Once upon a time Derek Hale had had a lot of nice things that most people took as granted. Stiles cleared his throat and rubbed at his nose for no good reason, then turned and went to fetch is cooling burrito and his coffee.

************

A pair of teenage boys had jimmied the back door of the 7-11 over on Pineridge Avenue. While the store clerk hovered curiously in the parking lot John and Daisy May found Roy Larkin and Alastair Raia curled up on the floor in the south corner of the store in front of the freezer, surrounded by empty Red Bull cans and sticky Rocket Pops wrappers, quivering and nauseated, and severely reconsidering their first impulsive venture into outlawry. 

After driving the boys home to continue being sick while being lectured by their parents, John headed back to the station for a well-earned coffee, and maybe an apple fritter to help him through the paperwork that filled a regrettable percentage of his position as Sheriff. He phoned Animal Control about the big cat print at Wilson's place, but ended up having to leave a message on their voicemail. After that he contacted Beacon Hills's local radio stations to broadcast a request that citizens temporarily stay out of the preserve, as signs of a very large cat, most likely a mountain lion, had been found in the area. John wasn't sure whether he ought to feel reassured by how matter-of-factly they all took the news.

Daisy May had spent the ride over to first Alastair's and then Roy's house in the back of the cruiser with Roy's face pressed into the fur on her neck as he tried not to be ill. John tore off a piece of his fritter and shared it with her, because she was a good pup, but he also advised her that as a member of law enforcement she oughtn't be commiserating with chuckleheads and would-be delinquents. 

His desk phone rang. It was Deputy Boyd, calling to inform John that at about the time he'd been escorting Alastair Raia home to get yelled at by his mother City Council member Walter Stevenson had called Dispatch to report either a hydra or a gorgon or possibly a Loch Ness cousin cavorting in the middle of Glass Lake. Boyd had driven out to Mr. Stevenson's house, which backed onto the water, to find a dozen bemused Canada geese out in the middle of the lake, circling and occasionally pecking at a camo-green plastic two-man kayak that had come loose from someone's dock. The geese, as far as Boyd could ascertain, had been previously minding their own business out in the lake, and had converged on the aimlessly floating big greenish thing in an effort to figure out whether it might be dangerous or edible. 

"Though I did wonder why Mr. Stevenson opted not to simply pick up a pair of binoculars and get a better look at the phenomenon that had piqued his curiosity I did not," Boyd said, "think it appropriate to laugh my ass off at a respectable citizen and elected city official."

"And right you were," John said. "That particular honor would fall to the Sheriff."

John figured Talia Hale had always meant for her daughter Laura to succeed her as alpha. She had raised Derek to be his sister's back-up, her best, strongest beta. After the long string of horrors in Beacon Hills had settled down, after Stiles and his friends had managed to graduate from high school, Vernon Boyd had expressed to John an interest in becoming a deputy sheriff. Derek was already on board as a sort of unofficial deputy, so John decided to send them both down to Eureka to the College of the Redwoods, where they roomed together as they enjoyed twenty-six weeks of basic law enforcement training. John had wondered whether Derek having once been Boyd's alpha might make things awkward, but Derek had been perfectly content to stand on even ground with him during their time at the college.

About mid-May John had mentioned to Derek that he wanted to talk to him about grooming a replacement for some day when he retired. Derek blanched beneath his five o'clock shadow and squeaked, "Oh God, it's not me, is it?" which wasn't exactly what John expected, but pretty much told him what he needed to know. He smiled in what he thought of as a fatherly way, though it had always made Stiles imagine the serpent Kaa singing the _Trust in Me_ song, patted Derek on the shoulder, and handed him a large envelope containing an assortment of cheerful and informative pamphlets from a dozen or so US law schools.

Derek stared at the big yellow envelope as though it might somehow contain a bear trap inside and said, "Sheriff?"

"In a couple of years," John said, "Boyd will have finished his B.S. at Portland, and he'll be thinking about his Masters in Earth Science. After that, well, either teaching geology to high school kids, or learning to step into my shoes when I decide I've had my fill. Or when the County Supervisors and the good people of Beacon Hills finally toss me out on my ass, whichever comes first. Either way, I'm sure he'd appreciate your legal know-how. Whaddya think?"

"Boyd would be good. But. Parrish has more experience. Doesn't he want it?"

"Not interested," John said. "As long as the county pay is good - and they've started talking about adding hazard pay for Beacon Hills - Jordan Parrish is disinterested in the mantle of leadership."

Derek yawped helplessly at him and waggled the big yellow envelope. "How? How did you know?"

John tapped the shiny badge pinned to his shirt. "I started calling universities around Brooklyn. And lo, who do I find managed a 3.9 GPA at Long Island?" He slapped Derek's shoulder and gave it a squeeze. "According to Mrs. Roberta MacInerny - who thinks the world of you, by the way, sends all her best - in the Guidance office, you still have a semester of World Lit. to complete before you can officially graduate. You can do it online, like Boyd. Isn't modern technology wonderful?"

*********

The moment Allison had recovered enough from her demonic injuries to safely travel Chris Argent had bundled his daughter onto a private plane and sent her to the south-west corner of Aquitaine, to his maternal grandmother, Martine Durand, who had maintained a cheerful hatred of Gerard Argent for forty-seven years, and which by the time of Allison's hurried and discreet arrival showed no signs of fading.

Allison took a long time to recover. She had, after all, been stabbed in the abdomen by a Japanese demon. This was not the sort of thing the average human sustained with a philosophical shrug, and "Oh, well, these things happen," because generally they didn't. 

Martine brought down a tutor from Biarritz to help Allison keep up with her schoolwork while she recovered from her wounds in the peaceful seclusion of a seaside vineyard, nothing but the green Atlantic glittering on one side, and Bordeaux grapes rolling away for miles on the other. Some day, God willing she might live so long, Martine Durand planned to dance on Gerard Argent's grave.

Allison's current visit to her grandfather's relatives in Montreal was as much business as social. Since she and Chris had agreed that the Argent name should stand for protection of the harmless, regardless of species, Chris had expected some resistance from his father's side of the family. That Allison had involved herself in a romantic relationship with not just one but two werewolves had spurred a loud and scandalized protest that Allison accepted with a defiant flick of her hair and the metaphorical shedding of gloves. She had died, once, dragged back from the edge by a stubborn love that had followed her into the darkness and lit her way back from it. After that, Allison's bar for drama had been set pretty high. The trip to Montreal wasn't to ask anybody for permission. She was there to kindly but firmly tell the family and any interested parties how things stood. 

Derek lingered over the photo of Chris, Allison and Isaac huddled together, smiling in front of the statue of Saint Joseph in the garden of Saint Joseph's Oratory in Montreal. They had earned this, all three of them, he thought. The blue skies and the flowers. He put his phone to sleep.

"They're aquamarine," Derek said. 

"What?" 

It was half past noon. Stiles and Derek were eating their lunch in Derek's cruiser across the street from Medium Joe's, because Liam called the station in a tizzy and told Derek that a customer he had seen at Medium Joe's on previous occasions had smelled "snakey" on the one day when he was standing in line directly ahead of Liam. It was probably nothing, but Derek felt it wouldn't hurt to do a little reconnaissance. That Stiles wanted to come along and sit around on a stakeout with him was unexpected.

"Lydia's favorite negotiating heels. They're the ones she likes to wear to important meetings, so she would have taken those to Bragg, and they're aquamarine, not blue." He scowled preemptively with one eyebrow, expecting Stiles to get after him for knowing so much about Lydia's shoes.

Stiles stuffed a handful of french fries into this mouth, chewed twice, and started talking again. "Joanna Sumner asked how come it's been so long since they've seen you. On account of how she went to college with your dad and introduced your parents to each other. How have you never told me this?"

"Stop," Derek said. "You're spraying crumbs all over the seat, and you look like a hamster." 

He used a paper napkin to brush crumbs off the cruiser's front seat into the palm of this hand. He'd been on edge since they arrived. Stiles plus undisclosed weirdness was exactly the sort of situation where _Oh by the way, mortal peril_ typically entered the picture and Derek ended up bleeding all over another new pair of jeans while Stiles pulled some heroically knuckle-headed stunt instead of running away like a sensible human, and almost died, and Scott showed up at the last minute to save them both and scowl at Derek judgmentally when it wasn't even his fault.

Stiles huffed at Derek and swallowed hurriedly. He made a face like a cat negotiating a hair ball and took a long drink of his soda. "Alpha Joanna is practically like your auntie. She babysat Boyd and Erica for you when the Alphas were kicking our collective ass, and even Isaac, finally. Probably the only reason he didn't end up with his head cut off by a bounty hunter. But no, you never call, you never write." 

"Don't exaggerate, Stiles. Your dad's convinced me to take my LSAT this fall," Derek said. "I have a lot of studying to do."

Stiles waved his arms excitedly, slamming his bruised knuckles into the metal screen behind the front seat. "Ow! Ow. That is awesome! My dad is awesome! What field, I mean what." He waved both arms about some more, as though he could trap his thoughts in the air with his long fingers. "Which specialty did you pick, family law, or criminal law?"

"Environmental, eventually," Derek said. "It could be very useful for all of us to have someone who's qualified to negotiate that particular legal labyrinth."

"So you can help preserve the preserve." Stiles winced. "You know what I mean." He jabbed a french fry in Derek's direction. "Stanford. You have to go to Stanford!"

"Stanford's the second best law school in the US," Derek said. "They only accept about ten percent of their applicants."

"Y'know, my dad has never let me or Scott live down the fact that he thought to go to you as his supernatural consultant pretty much five minutes after he recovered from being stabbed by an evil druid. Which I kind of was a little jealous about, except it made sense."

Derek scowled at him with both eyebrows. It was a light scowling, as Derek's scowlings went, one more of confusion than irritation. "Your father and my terrible history of relationships have what to do with law school?"

"Hey, nobody knew what Jennifer Blake was. Deaton didn't know. She _kidnapped_ him! Judas, he doesn't even have his own bestiary, and he was supposed to be your mom's emissary? This is why the trip to Fort Bragg needed to happen, Derek. Emissary Perlman, bless his ninety-year-old heart, has hooked me up with an antique book dealer in Wales. And by antique I don't just mean out of print first editions of James Joyce, y'know, nudge nudge, wink wink?" 

It occurred to Derek that nudge nudge wink wink probably did not mean what Stiles thought it meant. He opened his mouth to clear up Stiles's misapprehension, but changed his mind mid-breath and let Stiles rattle on.

"Crap," Stiles complained bitterly. "I'm gonna have to learn ancient Greek, probably." He waggled the french fry at Derek again. "The Argent bestiary first of all was in Latin, which Allison does not read, and then turned out to cover only European supernatural flora and fauna, which is a woefully narrow field. There we were, wasting time and valuable homework hours stealing information from creepy Gerard Argent, and sifting through the garbage on the internet. But my dad? He goes straight to you."

Derek took a long drink of his iced tea. During these past years post-turmoil Derek had realized that he often found Stiles's ranting strangely soothing, sort of like the sparrows fussing in the eaves outside his apartment. He tried not to look at that too closely. There be dragons. The fact that he even realized dragons existed in Stiles-infested waters was itself a persistent concern. "Still not seeing the connection," he said, compartmentalizing frantically.

"My dad realized immediately that you were A, a valuable resource, and B, really smart. Scott and I could have saved ourselves a lot of effort, anxiety, and some stabbing if we'd just come to you from the get-go."

"I was kind of an ass at the time," Derek admitted.

"Yes, you were, but also your life was a train wreck," Stiles argued. "Mostly due to other people being dicks, and you flailing around with no guidance. Which I get, because Scott and I were flying just as blind, except for Deaton, but you know what? Given my brief but extremely painful experience, I can't help but believe that as emissaries go Alan Deaton is an excellent veterinarian."

Derek choked on a mouthful of iced tea and shoved a fistful of napkins hurriedly against his mouth to keep from spluttering all over his steering wheel. "Eh-rrr?"

"You may have noticed he's got this tendency to keep useful information to himself until the crisis at hand has already begun to get severely out of hand, and frankly, if I'm in the middle of a goblin war I do not have time for him to play Doctor Mysterious."

Derek sniffled inelegantly through watering eyes and cleared his throat. "You've spent some time thinking this through."

"I have had ample opportunity, yes," Stiles said drily. "You were right, back at the beginning, when you tried to get Scott to join forces with you. He could have learned a lot, right out of the gate."

"I don't blame Scott."

"No, I know. He was a kid, scared and angry, and stupidly overwhelmed, but you were all of those things then, too, plus grieving for your sister. You tried hard to protect everybody. Even Scott, even me, always me, in spite of my being quite often a little shit. Just imagine, Derek, how much trauma we all might have been spared if you'd been given the adult supervision you so desperately needed back then. You might actually have been the leader you were trying so hard to be. You wanna know one of the things I hated most about high school?"

"Is that a trick question? Because I honestly wouldn't know where to begin." Derek paused thoughtfully. "Possibly with my uncle turning into a raging horror beast."

"The times I had to punch you back to consciousness," Stiles said. "There were a lot of horrible days, yes, moments of sheer, pants-wetting terror that still sneak up on me in the middle of the night and shock me awake in the dark, but right there among the worst of 'em were the times I had to punch you awake."

Derek shrugged. "It was only twice."

Stiles's eyes narrowed. "See, there you are with that--that thing where you literally shrug off being folded, spindled and mutilated. You deserve not to be punched!" He stuffed the cold french fry into his mouth and chewed it furiously. "Apply to fuckin' Stanford, Derek. Seize the goddamn day. You'll get in, especially if my dad writes you a reference. He can wax eloquent with the best of them when he puts his mind to it. Also you'd be only about an hour north of me, less considering the way either of us drives, and I would like that a lot." 

Stiles hunched over the greasy papers of his lunch, rummaging in the bag for a leftover onion ring. He had blushed pink, and frowned at the bag as though it had deliberately offended him. 

"Um," Derek said. "Thank you?" He was certain that somewhere within Stiles's indignant tirade he had missed something important. Possibly around the bits regarding spindling and mutilating, which he agreed were better left permanently off of his to-do lists. He made a note to himself to revisit this conversation in a quiet moment. Right now Stiles was bristling at the mess he was making like an angry raccoon.

Stiles looked up suddenly from shredding a napkin with his ketchup-smeared fingers as though he was about to add to his outburst, but instead he squinted past Derek out the driver's side window. "Is that him?"

Derek turned to see a man exiting Medium Joe's who seemed to match the description of the person they were waiting for. A middle-aged black man in a fedora and a neatly fitted tweed blazer with leather patches on the elbows lightly descended the three steps down onto the sidewalk and turned to his left. He was carrying a large white sack with Medium Joe's logo on it as he walked toward a nattily restored champagne pink Ford Rambler. He stopped next to the Rambler, set the bag down on the hood, and fished in his front pants pocket, coming up with a cell phone, which he put to his ear.

When Derek made no move to start up the cruiser Stiles asked him, "Aren't we going to follow him?"

Derek shook his head. "That's James Biddle. As in, Dr. James Biddle. He teaches biology at the community college. He's a herpetologist."

Dr. Biddle nodded at the person on the other end of the phone call, spoke a few words, then grinned and nodded excitedly before ending the call and quickly gathering up his lunch bag.

Stiles snorted a laugh and slumped against the back of the seat. "Of course he is."

Dr. Biddle steered his Rambler into the road and drove toward the cruiser. He smiled at Derek and gave a friendly wave as he drove past in the opposite direction. Derek returned the greeting in kind.

He heard the phone in Stiles's hoodie ping a text alert, and Stiles fished in his pocket for it.

"Dr. Biddle keeps a three foot long green iguana in his classroom," Derek added. "Her name is Ivy. Who's that?"

Stiles cackled triumphantly and waggled the phone at Derek. "Kira. She says they've met some nice boys from Juneau who were very _interesting_ to talk to."

"Okay," Derek said, "but why are you so excited about it? And is there a picture? They usually send me pictures. Malia's make the Canadian landscape look like Picasso took a run at it, but at least they're having fun."

"No, no," Stiles told him. "Fun to talk to means fun to talk to. _Interesting_ means they're supernatural and willing to share information with us about it. We don't text that kind of thing out loud."

Derek laughed, "You've turned Kira into your spy! Is Malia part of this?"

"Yeah, but we let Kira do the negotiating. She's got a better handle on the concept of finesse."

Derek bundled up their lunch trash, nodding, "Sure. More words. Less bloodshed. Good choice."

*********

In the hours leading up toward lunch time John and Daisy May had cruised some of the smaller roads that skirted just inside the edges of the preserve, places where human activity and animal activity tended to overlap. Daisy May had spent the entire time with her head out the passenger side window, trolling the wind for clues.

At the moment John was sitting at a little table in the back of MacNamara's, with Daisy May tucking into her lunch at his feet. John looked up as Deputy Jordan Parrish walked out the back door toward him. He wondered idly whether Parrish and Lydia had figured out yet what kind of supernatural being Parrish might be. John was privately hoping for a dragon. Given that Parrish appeared to be fire proof, and this being Beacon Hills, a dragon didn't seem beyond the realm of possibility. 

It wasn't much of a patio at the back of the diner. There was room enough for a couple of tables, mostly used by the waitresses and the kitchen crew, and if the wind was wrong sometimes John got an unfortunate whiff of the dumpster, but generally nobody he wasn't expecting bothered him out here. Occasionally smelly, but quiet.

Parrish took a seat on the opposite side of the table, and reached down to scritch behind Daisy's ears while she gave his pants leg a thorough sniffing. She whuffled at a particular spot and looked up at Parrish inquiringly.

John asked him, "I don't suppose you spotted any zebras or, I don't know, manticores or griffins or anything like that on the drive over here?"

Parrish said, "Beryl Scheinman over at the Lotus Heart Meditation Center called about a crocodile in the fountain."

"Crocodile? She mean an alligator?"

"Nope. _Crocodilus Acutus._ North American Crocodile. Apparently they're normally found only as far north as south Florida. It's a young one, about 6 feet long. Animal Control was busy, Beryl said. Something about an ostrich--"

"Two ferrets and a monkey wearing a red vest and a Shriner's hat?"

Parrish eyed the Sheriff warily. If he was suddenly acquiring prescience life in Beacon Hills was going to get a lot more interesting, and in Parrish's opinion the town was already well past its limit.

"Boyd backed me up," he said. "Six feet it turns out is a lot of crocodile for one deputy to handle."

"Anybody get hurt?"

"It bit me on the leg."

"You okay? I mean, did you need a tetanus shot or anything? Do crocodiles carry rabies? Can you even get tetanus?"

Parrish rolled up his left pant leg and showed John a hand-span of white gauze dotted in two places with small specks of red. 

"Huh," John said. "It doesn't feel like it's, y'know, festering or mutating or anything?"

Parrish shrugged and rolled down his pant leg. "It kind of throbs, I guess on account of multiple puncture wounds, and a lot of hydrogen peroxide, and Ms. McCall poking around in it to make sure no teeth got left in there, but otherwise, nothing unusual. Beryl did mention the crocodile had eaten a pigeon."

"Before or after it tried to eat you?"

"Before. Why do you ask?"

"Idle curiosity," John said. "And where's the crocodile now?"

"Boyd found a temporary spot for it over at the college. He's named it Chuckles."

John raised an eyebrow.

"Probably the smile," Parrish said. "We got a result on the license plate on that Kenworth you and I helped Smitty haul out of the ditch. It was stolen off a Chevy down in Petaluma."

John shrugged. "Eh. I'd like to say I'm surprised."

"I went out there again, up to the accident site. Before the crocodile wrestling, I mean. Didn't find much that we didn't already know about, except a single used syringe lying under a bush about twenty feet out from the road. It looked like it still had some stuff in it, so I handed it over to Claire Dietz at the hospital's lab after Ms. McCall checked out Chuckles's handiwork here and gave me a lecture on job safety."

John gave a short laugh. "Melissa McCall, who is always the last one to evacuate during a disaster, and who I have with my own eyes seen take a pair of grown werewolves by the ears and scold them about the deadlines for their college applications."

Scott had managed, largely in spite of himself, to get into the pre-vet program at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, and Isaac had already finished his EMT training at Sacramento State, and was enrolled in the Paramedics program. He was looking at a major in psychology or social work with an eye toward working with veterans. He couldn't very well join in the usual games of comparing physical scars, as his werewolf healing prevented him from having any, but he understood a great deal about the wounds of loss, and could wax pretty lyrical when it came to beatings.

John asked Parrish, "You didn't take the syringe to the county lab?"

"I didn't want to take the time to send it all the way across town and then end up in a queue."

"Well played. Claire get a result for us?"

Parrish made a small noise of disappointment. "Rainwater. Turned out the syringe was cracked. I hadn't noticed."

"It was worth a try," John told him. "That was good thinking."

"Claire did mention the gauge of the needle seemed kind of big, like it was maybe meant for a large animal instead of a human."

"Well now that is interesting," John said. "I'm not sure how far it gets us, but it is interesting."

"Yeah," Parrish said. "That's what we thought." 

Daisy May, who had long ago finished her dish of broken-up hamburger patties, all of the handful of John's french fries that he'd offered her and quite a few that he didn't know about, nudged John's leg and looked longingly at a fry left teetering and growing sadly chilled on the edge of John's plate.

John told her, "Sorry, little buddy. No more starchy people-food for you." He seemed to recall his cheeseburger had come with a larger pile of fries than the current state of his lunch plate would indicate, but as he'd been on the phone to a sympathetic keeper down at Safari West for part of his lunch, and therefore distracted, he couldn't prove it beyond a reasonable doubt.

Parrish argued amiably, "Does that seem fair, telling her No and then eating the rest in front of her?"

"A full mongoose is a slow mongoose," John said.

Daisy May appeared unconvinced.

***********

"One of these days," Derek said as he locked the door on his cruiser, "someone on the school board will suddenly get the wild idea to lock this place up when school isn't in session. Maybe pay a security guard or twelve."

"But today is not that day," Stiles observed. 

They found Erica and Boyd on the athletic field behind the high school, where Boyd was chasing a zebra back and forth, trying to keep it from plunging into the forest at the edges of the field, while Erica laughed and took pictures with her phone. 

The zebra's hooves trotting over the damp surface of the hard-packed ground sounded like a half dozen tennis balls in a tumble dryer. Boyd's uniform was splattered with bits of mud, and smeared with grass stains from the hips down.

"Which one of us is the apex predator here," Boyd complained as he failed for what seemed like the fortieth time to lasso the zebra. The zebra, for its part, seemed to find this afternoon's chase a highly amusing game, which to all appearance it was winning. 

"Nor am I a cowboy," Boyd continued. "However, if we could, I would like to keep this ridiculous animal from scampering off into the forest and maybe being devoured by a manticore."

Stiles goggled. "Manticore? Have you seen one?"

"There is no manticore, Stiles. Just, you know." Boyd took a quick glance at the darkening edges of the preserve. He didn't want to have jinxed himself.

"You've seen the photos Dad sent around from McGinty's," Stiles said. "Those cat feet are extremely big." He clawed the air with both hands and mimed a ferocious man-eating predator.

"I tried calling Animal Control," Erica said, "but all I got was someone babbling about an ostrich, two ferrets and a monkey. Kinda makes you wonder what they've been smoking over there." 

Stiles sat down on the bleacher seat next to her to watch while Derek, an extra rope dangling from one fist, jogged over toward Boyd and the zebra. "And can we have some?"

Erica was bound for Quantico after she graduated from Portland. She'd been urging Stiles to come to Virginia with her, so that they could be Batman & Catwoman, and together set the FBI on its collective ear. The notion was awfully tempting, but Stiles was still undecided. He liked the library, partly for research potential and partly as a handy hideout, and he mostly enjoyed serving as Scott's emissary, or as close to one as they'd got. Still, following his father into law enforcement had been a constant in his mind since he'd been a little kid. His father, Stiles knew, would be proud of him, was already proud of him, no matter which he chose.

Erica gave Stiles a knowing look. "So, I call Derek and I get two great American heroes for the price of one."

Stiles blinked at her. "Eh?"

"First saving Beacon Hills from vicious flying rodents. Possibly vampires."

"Bats are not actually--"

"And then you and Derek on a long, leisurely stakeout lunch together."

"Liam thought he'd found a shape-shifter, or an evil wizard, but it turned out to be a perfectly innocent herpetologist."

"Like a date. Finally," Erica persisted.

"I’msorrywhatnow?" Stiles fumbled his phone, in the process inadvertently taking a photograph of his own sneakers. 

The zebra dodged left. Derek lunged for it a moment too late. The zebra darted right, clipped Derek smartly in the shoulder, and zagged left again as he spun once and went down in a heap in the wet grass. Boyd stood over him making sympathetic clucking noises.

"I was there when you called the station about the great puppy rescue this morning." Erica growled a little, and her eyes flashed briefly. "Vernon wouldn't let me ride along. Lucky for Trent. He was a bully in high school. He's still a bully. I do not like bullies."

"You once walloped me with part of my own Jeep," Stiles pointed out.

"I have matured since then," Erica said.

Boyd finished untangling himself from the lacrosse goal net as the zebra cavorted merrily out of lasso range. "Baby, please do not ever make me fill out vengeance-and-wrath paperwork on you. Let the justice system do its job."

Derek snorted. "Really?" The entire left side of his uniform by this time was a long smear of grass and mud.

"Brother," Boyd said, "we gotta at least make the mundane effort. I feel bad when the boss gets that 'Oh, not again' look on his face."

Derek nodded. "Fair enough." 

"Your father has grown very fond of Derek," Erica said to Stiles.

Stiles watched Derek stalk the zebra from behind as Boyd tried to hold its attention by turning his back on it and appearing busy with his shoelaces. "I feel as though I've acquired a lot of very dangerous siblings, and I'm not sure how to process that."

Erica shrugged. "Your dad dads really well."

"'Dads'? Is that a verb I'm gonna find in Merriam Webster?"

Erica regarded him steadily. "I am confident Derek does not see you as a sibling."

Stiles felt his heartbeat speed up suddenly, as though he were a secret agent whose cover had been blown. "Clarify for the kids in the back row?"

Erica cuffed the back of Stiles's head.

"Ow! Hey!"

"Quit being intentionally dense. I am tired of smelling feckless hipster secretions and too much patchouli all over you every time you come home. It makes me want to break something. Starting with the next hipster." 

Derek made a grab for the zebra's tail and came up with a handful of air. Boyd watched mournfully as the zebra pretended to graze on a patch of dandelions on the far side of the field.

"I have not been dating feckless hipsters! Or any hipsters," Stiles protested. 

Erica rolled her eyes skyward, as though seeking Heaven's witness. "I enjoy long, friendly talks with your father. We bond over double meat cheeseburgers and the general weirdness that is our lives. He's getting desperate, Stiles."

Stiles groaned in a put-upon fashion. "Ahhh, my dad's cholesterol! Nick was not feckless."

"He was a fake art major," Erica countered severely. Her tone of voice implied Stiles's most recent ex had made a habit of frightening small children and pulling the wings from butterflies.

"Kira is an art major! Wait. Fake art? Is that a thing? It sounds so much easier than anthropology."

"Kira's field of study is _architecture_ and urban design, Stiles, you know the difference! Nick Devereaux is a poser who spends the bulk of his time criticizing other people's efforts, then making excuses not to take his own risks. He's an illusion of an artist, and you know that, which is why you dated him!"

"Why I dated him? That doesn't even make any sense!"

"He isn't Derek," Erica said. "You two have been sparking off of each other since the beginning. Don't even try to argue that with me, I was there."

Stiles knew he was fighting a losing battle, but that had never stopped him before. "The beginning? Please. Derek back then was surly, mistrustful, and tended toward yelling and breaking things." Also, Stiles's brain reminded him unhelpfully, of crossing his magnificent arms over his powerful chest and looking broodingly heroic and tragic and really, really distracting, which, in spite of Stiles's best efforts for the last two years at UC Santa Cruz, a campus replete with attractive an open-minded peers, he had not been able to forget. Stiles's life was horrible, and a lie.

"He has gotten a lot better," Stiles admitted feebly. "He smiles now. Probably something to do with not being hunted all the damn time, I suppose." 

"You are never going to let yourself get serious about anybody who isn't Derek," Erica said. "Derek, who feeds your father _broccoli._ "

"Broccoli? Really? My father is an enemy of all green vegetables, and broccoli is public enemy-- Wait, no!" Stiles flailed at Erica, but to no avail. He ought to have known. Erica was by now utterly immune to Stile's flailing. "You stay out of my brain with your Jedi mind-tricks!"

"My point is that you and Derek need to get your romantic shit together. The pining is beginning to get on everybody's nerves." Erica's eyes flashed gold at him. "Do not force me to intervene."

"You are intervening," Stiles grumbled.

Erica growled, "Not _yet._ "

Stiles spent a narrow-eyed moment trying to imagine how such a threat might manifest itself in physical and/or emotional trauma. "You are a terrifying woman," he griped. "Quantico has no idea of the storm about to visit herself upon them. Are you aware that Beacon Hills during our high school years rivaled New Orleans for murders? Considering the differences in our populations that is grotesque. It is, however, a real-world statistic that any supervisor can relate to. Eventually you'll probably end up becoming Rafael McCall's boss. That'll teach him to go around recruiting people."

Erica gave him a wide, toothy smile. "Oh, stop. You're making me blush."

"Bah," Stiles said. He decided the most sensible path at this moment lay in turning the subject away from his failure at self-awareness. "Boyd's a werewolf. Derek's a werewolf. By this point in the proceedings I have to wonder whether they're holding back from subduing Stripey McStripeypants here in swift, blunt werewolf fashion out of concern it'll suffer some sort of fear-induced seizure, or whether they're having as much fun as the zebra is, but they don't want to admit it."

"Well," Erica pointed out, "dead zebras aren't much fun." 

The zebra was making another circuit of the edge of the field, occasionally glancing coquettishly over its shoulder at Boyd and Derek or kicking up its heels in a flirtatious sort of way, and apparently having the time of its life.

Erica took a photograph to send to Cora. "Eventually I'll have to get Wilson over here with a horse trailer and some genuine wrangler know-how. But that can wait."

 

***********

At the Beacon County Sheriff's Station John had answered three calls for help getting kittens out of trees, and one, oddly, of a Siberian husky named Pete who had got himself halfway up a 40-foot redwood and wouldn't come down. Slightly shy of available deputies at the moment, he had answered one kitten in distress himself, and assigned the other three calls to Deputy Dave Barrymore, figuring Dave was young and stringy and could use the outdoor exercise. 

Daisy May employed this time prowling the office, and making friends with Jackie in Dispatch, who John suspected of giving Daisy May sugar cookies, as Daisy May had curled up on a chair in the corner of John's office, napping and looking, if John was any judge, a bit bilious. He finally decided he'd had enough of sitting, and suggested to Daisy May they go for a ride around town to check for nefarious activity. She licked her muzzle in a thoughtful sort of way, then poured herself off the chair to follow John out to the cruiser. Eventually, and to no great surprise, they ended up at the preserve.

It was late afternoon by that time, and though the sun wouldn't be down for a while yet it was coming on dark among the trees. John's radio reception was no better than it had been that morning, and when it screeched to life beneath the cruiser's dash he heard what he thought was Jackie's voice saying something about a zebra, though he couldn't make out whether they'd caught it, merely seen it, or whether Jackie was asking John if he had any news of it. When he tried to respond to ask probably-Jackie to clarify all he got in response was what sounded like a half dozen cats trying to climb up a screen door.

He had reached for his cell phone on the dash to get hold of Boyd, and turned to Daisy May to complain about budgetary restrictions, and suggest the possibility of forcing county supervisors to spend eight hours sequestered in his cruiser listening to his radio when he caught a flash of black and white out of the corner of his right eye. Before he could brake the cruiser and focus on it it had slipped into the undergrowth at the side of the road about thirty feet behind, and then disappeared into the ferns and green shadows of the trees.

"Ha!" John crowed. "The game's afoot!"

Daisy May had been looking at John at the time he spotted the zebra stripes, but she was willing to take his word for it, and jumped up eagerly to peer out the open window as John backed up, turned the cruiser nose forward, and eased it onto the narrow path where the stripes had disappeared. The path was barely wide enough for the cruiser, and the tips of branches from the bushes alongside the path scraped against the sides. At one point a branch from a wild rhododendron caught and broke, and the cruiser forged carefully ahead with a bouquet of pink flowers stuck between the wind shield and the passenger's side mirror. John was determined to see where the zebra thought it was going, and continued forward until the trail finally widened out and ended in a little clearing, a sort of cul-de-sac among the trees.

The cruiser could go no further, and there was no obvious sign of the zebra, but John and Daisy May got out of the cruiser anyway, and began to pace the area to learn what might be learned before it got too dark.

Daisy May, her nose close to the ground, tracked the clearing in circles, whining excitedly. John watched her fondly for a moment, before returning to his search for hoof prints in the forest floor. The ground was deeply carpeted with saw-edged twigs fallen from the big redwoods, old fern fronds, and the thick, dead leaves of rhododendrons. John found a little cluster of yellow mushrooms growing in the shelter of a long-dead log that had a dogwood sapling growing up through the split middle of it. He was scolding himself for not having his phone, so that he could take a picture of it for Derek, when Daisy May came to a sudden stop and began to growl, with all her hackles on high alert. 

John flipped the catch on his holster and wrapped his fingers around the butt of his weapon a half moment before a great beast bolted out of the underbrush, a volcano of black and white striped shoulders and ivory fangs, and blue eyes like glaciers burning. One vast paw knocked John ass over ears, leaving him on the ground bleeding and scrambling backward among the dead leaves like a hermit crab out of his shell, expecting any second to be bitten in half, but there was Daisy May between him and the creature, crouched low, barking up into the big cat's face, with her tail straight out behind her, the fur standing up along it like the fletching on an arrow. 

Instead of rending him to pieces the tiger was backing up in a hurry, with Daisy May going off like the entire Fourth of July right under its nose. It snarled and swiped at her with its great paws, but she ducked low, then nipped upward at the tiger's jaws, pushing it steadily backward.

In the time it took for John to fumble on the ground for his weapon, find it lost partway beneath the cruiser, and struggle to his feet, the tiger had turned tight on its hindquarters and fled into the bushes, startled witless by eighteen pounds of stubborn canine fury.

John fired a few rounds high into the trees after the crashing noises the great cat was making as it escaped through the undergrowth, grabbed up Daisy May, still noisy and incandescent with rage, tossed her into the cruiser, and leaped in after her. He jammed the cruiser into reverse and backed at a wildly unsafe speed down the path they had come, brush and branches flung sideways, a pair of unlucky saplings bulldozed by the cruiser's rear bumper rattling against the undercarriage to spring up bedraggled and leaning drunkenly as it passed over them. 

Heedless of the brush rushing past the cruiser, Daisy May lunged halfway out the passenger window to deliver a stream of sulfurous collie invective into the leafy dark. 

John backed the cruiser hard enough onto the asphalt that it was already mostly turned toward home when he slammed it into drive. The transmission emitted a loud grind of protest that John ignored. They'd covered a fast mile of blacktop before he yanked the cruiser over to an abrupt standstill on the shoulder of the road. 

Daisy May directed a final series of sharp, derisive yaps toward the forest, then scrambled back into the cruiser. She gave herself a vigorous shake from nose to tail. An assortment of battered flora and a couple of tiny brown grasshoppers drifted from her coat onto the seat of the cruiser. She let out an ear-flapping sneeze and licked her nose with a satisfied flourish.

John stared out the windshield and sucked in long, steadying breaths, his brain buzzing with adrenaline and visions of the tiger, tiger, burning bright, somewhere out there, in the night. "I did not expect that," he said.

************

The stars were out, finally, splashed high and sharp across the clear indigo sky above Derek. He had left Boyd and Erica at the school holding the zebra for Wilson to fetch with a horse trailer.

Derek had driven Stiles first to the hospital, where they had watched Dr. Prajapati put twelve stitches into the claw marks on Sheriff Stilinski's left hip, while Melissa McCall distracted him by waving a double cappuccino from the hospital dining hall just out of his reach and lectured him about job safety and how the duty belt he was always complaining about had probably saved him forty more stitches or possibly abdominal surgery, at which point Stiles had turned an interesting shade of green, and Derek had guided him quickly out of the room and down the hall to the nurses' station, where the Sheriff's fluffy new partner, hidden discreetly beneath the big counter, happily accepted pets and treats from the nurses. 

Daisy May had regarded Derek with palpable misgivings at first, but a little cajoling and a donut had gone a long way toward inter-species alliance. Stiles and Daisy May had immediately accepted one another as kin, and Stiles had sat on the floor for some time with the little collie in his arms. 

"Daisy May Stilinski," he promised, "Beacon County Deputy Sheriff," would be the name engraved on her dog tags. "In the shape of a shamrock," he added, as Daisy May watched his face carefully and finally decided a good nose-licking would do him a world of good. "You can get them that way," Stiles said, as his hands slowly stopped shaking. "A lucky shamrock."

During the trip back to the library to fetch his Jeep Stiles had startled Derek by asking to meet him in an hour at the promontory. It wasn’t that Derek didn’t expect the conversation, given Stiles’s outburst earlier in the day, only that he hadn’t expected it to happen so soon. 

He had been waiting for only a few minutes when he spotted the glow of the Jeep's headlights as Stiles steered it carefully along the narrow dirt track among the trees.

Alan Deaton had neither encouraged nor trained Stiles to be Scott's emissary. In a time of necessity he had introduced Stiles to the spark of magic within him, but then Deaton had never mentioned it again, as though the discovery of Stiles's potential as a magic wielder had never happened. As though it meant nothing. When the nogitsune had taken Stiles Derek had wondered even then whether Deaton had intervened not on Stiles's behalf particularly, but for Scott, for the sake of the city. Whether Deaton genuinely liked Stiles, or whether he simply found him useful. Over the past few years Stiles had done his own research on magic, on supernatural histories. He had reached out to other packs and cultivated his own connections with other emissaries, had carded the fibers and woven together the threads of his supernatural education on his own. 

Derek's grim smile opened into a soft laugh as Stiles parked the Jeep and clambered out, dropping his keys on the ground and nearly braining himself on the open driver's side door as he fumbled for them in the fallen leaves. Given any ordinary day Stiles possessed all the grace of a baby gazelle with a sprained ankle, but come to a fight and that awkwardness inexplicably vanished. When his friends needed him most, Stiles blossomed, burning bright and furious, Beacon Hills's very own avenging angel in mis-matched flannel. Alan Deaton, Derek reflected, was probably afraid of Stiles. 

Stiles adjusted his flannel shirt where it had twisted and partially tucked itself into the back of his jeans. He jingled his keys nervously, watching the moon slowly wheel westward. The light glinted silver sparks from his eyes. The cold silver faded and warmed as Stiles turned to Derek.

"Lydia told me." He wrinkled his nose, uncharacteristically tongue-tied. "We should talk, she said. Also, Erica threatened some undisclosed future action."

"That was a very hard conversation to ignore," Derek said.

Stiles winced. "Werewolf hearing. Sorry."

"Pretty sure Erica meant it to happen."

Stiles huffed a rueful laugh. "That woman is relentless."

Derek nodded. "People assume I turned Erica because she was a pretty girl. Or because she was vulnerable. No. I turned Erica because she is strong."

"Next it'll be my dad getting after us."

"Too late," Derek said.

Stiles laughed aloud, easier now with the teasing between them. He rubbed at his forehead and looked Derek in the eyes. "Once upon a time," he began. "I think it started at the Sheriff's station that night of the massacre. Blood everywhere, and. God. The moment Scott showed up the first thing you did was yell at him to get me out of there. I was terrified for my dad, but you were worried about me. And I started to think I needed to look at you differently." He looked down at his shoes and fiddled with his keys. "A lot of hindsight happened after that."

"You seemed so breakable, but you kept standing shoulder to shoulder with Scott, who wasn't, and--" Derek shook his head sharply. "Do you remember when the Kanima - Jackson - had us pinned at the swimming pool? You managed to keep me from drowning for almost two hours. _How_ did you do that?"

Stiles regarded Derek curiously. "Uh. Treading water? Dude, you were there."

"Two hours," Derek repeated. "While wearing sweatpants. Have you ever wondered." He shrugged uncomfortably and looked over Stiles's head at the glittering sky. This wasn't how he'd pictured this conversation going. Precisely, he hadn't pictured it at all. Mostly he had never dared. 

"Have I ever wondered what," Stiles urged quietly.

"How a human kid who was not on the swim team could do that. I mean, you were fit from lacrosse, but it's not the same thing."

"I had to," Stiles said simply. "You were gonna die if I didn't and." Stile's eyes narrowed accusingly. "Look who's talking, Derek! You shoved me behind you and went all wolfie at a creature you knew very well could take you down, in the ridiculously optimistic hope I'd make a run for it and just leave you and Erica there. That horrible night at my dad's - at the Sheriff's Station - homicidal lizard and murderous hunter gang run completely amok, what's the first thing you do as soon as you can move? Yell at Scott to get me out of there so you can throw yourself into the grinder. You were always shoving people behind you back then, usually me. I mean, not always literally, but." Stiles rubbed at his face. "You know what I mean. I had to, so I did. "

"Just like at Jungle," Derek said. "With the mountain ash. You were so surprised that it worked. It shouldn't have worked, but you made it happen because you believed it was necessary. Stiles, I don't think Scott's given a single thought as to whether he needs an emissary, but I think you believe Beacon Hills needs one, and you're stepping into that role because it's in your nature to do what's necessary to keep the people you love safe. You'll make it work or die trying. And I think." 

Derek looked off to the side, staring for a moment out at the lights of Beacon Hills down in valley. "I think that's why Deaton never brought it up again."

"You think he was trying to protect me from myself?"

"No," Derek said. "I believe he was not prepared for you. He was so caught up with Scott that he tried to let you forget what you'd done, as though it was a fluke." He added angrily, "That was a mistake a lot of people paid for. I'm pretty sure the nogitsune chose you because of who you are and what you're capable of, and Deaton still hasn't admitted it."

Stiles's skeptical expression broadened into a grin. "You think I have magic."

Derek strode close to Stiles, his fists clenched at his sides. 

Stiles instinctively backed up against the Jeep, but the happy grin stayed put.

"He knew that traveling over the threshold the way you, Scott and Allison did would make each of you a target for the kind of opportunistic spirits that lurk out there in the dark, beyond the firelight, yet he offered none of you any means of protecting yourselves!" 

Derek took in a quick breath, as though surprised at himself. He backed up a step. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to raise my voice. Why are you laughing?"

"You're probably right about all of that," Stiles told him. "And I'll be really angry about it later, but right now I'm thinking you've all but called me a super-hero and if I didn't already have a giant, jelly-kneed crush on you this would be ground zero."

Derek shook his fists loose. His eyebrows flickered upward hopefully. "Really?"

"You know this! Oh my God, no wonder our friends are so fed up with us, we are such dumbasses." Stiles reached forward and grabbed Derek by his shirtfront. "Dude."

"Don't call me dude." Derek smiled as he let Stiles pull him close.

"You had me at 'This is private property.'"

"That is a weird thing to get aroused by."

Stiles shrugged and tugged possessively at Derek's shirt front. "I'm a weird guy. C'mere and kiss me, you know I have no patience at all once I've made up my mind."

"Yes," Derek agreed, leaning close. "I am aware." He took hold of Stile's jeans at the hips and pulled him forward decisively.

"Hot diggity," Stiles said, and then, "Stop laughing, Derek, we need to be _kissing_ now."

A moment later that was emphatically true.

 

Shy of sunrise Wednesday morning, and Stiles was bundled together with Derek in the middle of Derek's bed, wrapped in a comforter that was going to need a good washing. For the moment, they were studying the information displayed on Derek's laptop. "See, you could go to San Jose State," Derek said. "I looked it up. Yesterday before we met at the promontory."

"I have beard burn," Stiles informed Derek smugly. "Pretty much everywhere. I mean, _everywhere._ "

Derek blushed fetchingly and nudged him with a bare shoulder. "Pay attention. Look. San Jose offers programs in both criminal justice, and information and library sciences. You could try them both, and decide which you like better. Or neither, and finally stick with anthro. You'll be brilliant at that, as well. Stiles, your horizons could be so much broader than Beacon Hills, but you need the opportunity to choose." 

Stiles decided resistance was futile and also no fun, and managed to shuffle a little nearer. "Stanford is only about thirty minutes from San Jose," he noted.

"Less, considering the way either of us drives," Derek said automatically. He cleared his throat anxiously, committing himself to a course he hadn't thought to dare. "Or. Or, if we were living in the middle somewhere the commute to school for either of us, assuming I make it into Stanford, would be pretty easy. But even if I don't make Stanford, you could still--mmmph!"

Derek flailed as Stiles flung himself sideways at Derek, dislodging the laptop, which slipped from Derek's grip and disappeared over the edge of the mattress onto the blankets piled on the floor. "Yes. Okay," Stiles said breathlessly, when he was finished kissing Derek silly.

Derek beamed up at him. "But you know I might not make it in."

"You will," Stiles insisted, "but even if you don't, we'll figure something out. So let's consider Plan A, in which things go right for both of us for a change. There's going to be so much paperwork with me changing schools, and it's already July, there's no way I can make it to San Jose this fall, it'll have to be winter quarter, or no, they're on a semester system, so spring semester at the earliest, and this fall is the earliest you can take the LSAT, and then you have to apply to law schools." Stiles stopped for a breath and shook Derek by the shoulders for emphasis.

Derek blinked up at Stiles, who had straddled his hips. It was exceptionally distracting. "Er," he said, reaching desperately for coherence. "I have a class to finish at Long Island before I officially graduate. One." 

The rising sun through the loft's windows slid across Stiles's bare shoulders, warming his skin and accentuating the roll of muscle beneath, making it clear how broad his shoulders had grown. In this morning's light he might have passed as a Renaissance statue in the Louvre. The manic grin, and the giant purple hickey on the side of his neck did skew the image somewhat.

"Let's head for Wales," Stiles suggested. "Find Emissary Perlman's friend the bookseller, enjoy the beautiful scenery, have a lot of sex. Learn a little magic - I mean it's Wales, right, Island of the Mighty - get into trouble, have some fun."

"Could we have some fun without the getting into trouble part?" Derek suggested. "For the novelty of it."

From under one of the pillows teetering on the edge of the bed Derek's phone beeped with a text alert.

Stiles growled at it. "Don't answer," he warned, as Derek struggled part way out from beneath him. "It's probably Boyd. It'll mean no-sex-for-you-this-morning trouble, mark my words!"

Derek thumbed open the text and held it up for Stiles to see Kira and Malia laughing at them in front of a crowd of happy strangers who jostled to fit themselves into the background of the photograph, taken slightly askew. 

Kira's text read, "Poutine eating contest in the dining car last night. Competition fierce from locals, also Dave and Ike from U of WA, but MALIA TATE WINNER!!!!"

Stiles wriggled closer to Derek so that he could see the picture better. 

"She has upheld the honor of the Hales," Derek said. "I am very proud." Then he tossed the phone aside, rolled over, neatly maneuvering Stiles beneath him before Stiles could protest, and leaned down to gently bite him on the nose.

"Weirdo," Stiles honked happily.

************

John awoke curled up on the sofa, where he had landed after getting stitched up at the hospital. In the kerfuffle with the tiger he had lost his baton, his handcuffs and one magazine pouch off of his duty belt, but it had, Dr. Prajapati pointed out, probably meant the difference between a dozen stitches and a much, much more interesting scar. 

While Daisy May had immediately made herself at home and curled up in John's cushiest chair, sleepy and full of cheeseburger patties, Melissa had managed to get John to change into a t-shirt and comfortable sweatpants. She had been unable to persuade him to actually go to bed. Instead, she had sat together with him watching something easily forgotten on television until he tilted sideways and dozed off against the arm of the sofa, and then she had covered him with an extra blanket. She had left him a note on the coffee table, held in place by a glass of water and a couple of aspirin, warning him that she would be back at some point in the morning to check his stitches. There was a p.s. at the bottom that read, "Stiles + Derek it looks like. Finally!!!!"

John laughed carefully and wondered whether maybe that was worth a few stitches. Though he could have done without the terror.

Still curled in the chair, Daisy May raised her head and yawned widely. Her tongue rolled out long and pink, then curled back in again like a New Year's Eve party favor. She stretched herself flat in the chair, rolled over onto her back, and regarded John serenely from upside down. Wilson, John reflected, was going to be insufferable.

John's phone rang, muffled somewhere under the sofa cushions. He winced at the sting of his stitches as he dug it out to answer it. "John. Sheriff." He sighed and rubbed at his eyes. "Stilinski."

Chris Argent began, oddly hesitant, "Ah. John. Got a question."

"You and the kids okay? On your way home?" The water and the aspirin beckoned, and he scooted toward them. Past Chris's voice he could hear traffic, and familiar young voices chattering excitedly. It was a little early for them to be at a rest stop, but he figured they might have stopped somewhere for breakfast.

"We're fine, all of us. Allison, Isaac and I collected Scott from his dad's place yesterday. They've all been making goo-goo eyes at each other ever since. Uuugh, it's so _gross!_ " Behind Chris, Allison's voice rose in laughing denial. 

"We're outside Albion," Chris continued less dramatically. "Has anything unusual been going on up there?"

"Unusual for Beacon Hills, or unusual for what people who live in normal towns consider unusual?"

"That last one," Chris said.

"Well." John gratefully washed down the aspirins with half the glass of water. "Wilson McGinty made me get a dog, and then we almost got eaten by a tiger."

"You and Wilson?"

"Me and the dog. What's going on, Chris?"

"First of all, I swear I haven't been drinking and driving."

"Okay. Good to know."

Daisy May rolled to her feet, shook herself thoroughly, and fixed John with an expression which clearly meant a trip outside followed by a hearty breakfast wouldn't come amiss.

Chris took a breath and blurted, "We just passed an ostrich carrying two ferrets, and a monkey wearing a red vest and a Shriner's hat. They were heading south. I'm pretty sure the monkey was driving."

"Huh. Well I'll be." John scratched at one ear. "Did you see which exit they took?"

"Looked like maybe they were headed for State Highway 128, going southeast. They were behind us by then, so I couldn't be sure. Is it important?"

"Nah," John said. He stretched his legs out carefully. His stomach growled, and Daisy May's ears pricked up hopefully. "Just wondering."

 

\----#---


End file.
